Mark Albertson, who is well known to DMA members as an entertaining and informative speaker and historian, will talk about George Washington’s Farewell Address, delivered in 1796. It’s one of the best by any departing president. Washington offers an array of prognostications along with his concerns, a number of which, unfortunately, have arisen over the course of our history. Washington himself, of course, is fascinating. He was a large landowner. He was a slaveowner. But here is a man who had the opportunity to take control of the country as General of the Army and refused to do so. Here is a man who served his two terms as president and then willingly vacated the highest political office in the land, setting the precedent of the two-term presidency. Into the 20th century all second term presidents willingly leave office. That is American Exceptionalism. America was blessed from the historical perspective that George Washington was not another Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, or Napoleon Bonaparte, which is something that comes around once every Haley’s Comet.

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